ITS CAUSE AND REMEDY 47 



the out-of-balance condition of our rural 

 life. During a drive for the poor starving 

 Armenians I took a section among the 

 working people with a gentleman who was 

 a Harvard graduate from the East, lately 

 engaged in business in this city. When we 

 got back to the Portland Hotel, our head- 

 quarters, he gave me his cheque for $25 and 

 I gave him my cheque. He said, Mr. Withy- 

 combe, I had no idea there was so much 

 poverty in the city of Portland as we have 

 seen today. This conditions is almost en- 

 tirely caused by the conditions I have ex- 

 plained and I fear for our America if some 

 wise and strong statesman does not adjust 

 our national economics, so our homes, both 

 rural and city, shall become happy and 

 prosperous. Under the prevailing condi- 

 tions our farms are being treated like a 

 piece of merchandise, used as long as profit- 

 able and then thrown aside like an old shoe. 

 Sixty millions of people placed in our rural 

 homes with permanent prosperity will safe- 

 guard this nation better than 10 millions 

 of trained soldiers. 



In my boyhood days I saw the American 

 merchant marine before it was hit by the 

 protected tariff. Several American ships 

 were in the English Expedition up the Red 

 Sea to Annesley Bay to carry commissary 

 stores and troops to the Abysinnia war, 

 when Great Britain spent 50 millions sterl- 

 ing to recover her ambassador and his staff 



